The best ways to stop your skin stressing out

If you’re someone who regularly suffers from breakouts and other common skin complaints, you’ll know exactly how frustrating it can be when your complexion looks completely stressed out.

First things first – what’s the cause of it all?

The way that we’re feeling plays a huge role in how our skin looks and feels and stress plays a huge role in skin flare-ups. When we’re feeling under pressure, a hormone called cortisol is released, and this can prompt many things to happen in our bodies, including an accumulation of fat, or making your skin oily, dry or full of acne.

Other factors including sleep and exercise can have incredible effects on the health of our skin, but sometimes a breakout can be completely unavoidable. Here are some of the best ways to calm your skin during these periods.

Stock up on superfoods

It’s no secret that maintaining a good diet is vital to your overall health but in those stressful times, it’s even more important to be mindful of what you eat. Oily fish such as salmon, and fruit and vegetables like avocado, blueberries and lemons can be a great addition to your diet if you’re looking to gain a glowing complexion. This is because these foods contain vitamin C, antioxidants, collagen and amino acids that have been proven to directly benefit the way that you look.

Promote your probiotics

You might have heard of probiotics before, but perhaps you had absolutely no clue about what they are. They are live bacteria and yeasts, mainly found in your gut, that help to keep your microbiome balanced and your immune system strong. So how does this help your skin? As probiotics help your gut to break down food, absorb nutrients, and get rid of nasty toxins, it will eliminate any bad bacteria that can cause acne and other issues with your skin. Foods such as yoghurt, apple cider vinegar, pickles and kimchi are a great source of probiotics so add these to your diet when things are feeling (and looking) stressful.

Breathe…deeply

Meditation has been proven to be beneficial to both our mental and physical health, and because everything in our body is connected (in some way or another), it’s no surprise that having a calm mind will lead to calm skin. When we feel strong emotions, the body can react in different ways. This explains why we tend to see pimples appear a day before an important job interview. Don’t worry, taking some time out to enjoy guided meditation can help you to handle your response to daily stressors, impacting your stress hormone levels and leading to better sleep, better digestion and better skin.

Use natural beauty products

One of the biggest factors for skin breakouts is the chemical nasties lurking in our most used beauty products. There are thousands of chemicals in your tubes, tubs and bottles, and we’d like to bet that you don’t know what half of them are. Ingredients such as parabens, triclosan, and sodium lauryl sulfate are the most common and have been proven to lead to a host of issues not just with our skin but with what’s going on inside our bodies. With a myriad of natural, organic beauty products on the market today, such as those by Tropic Skincare, now is the time to make the switch. The general rule is: if you don’t recognise the ingredient, don’t buy the product.